Studies in Cola History and Administration c6.19.2

c6.19.2

We may notice, though without stressing it, the inaccuracy of part of the statement which follows: "The first half of this anthology deals with the former subject (wars and gifts), the next fourth with the latter (deaths), and the last fourth seems to be a miscellaneous supplement in which odes discovered later on both subjects were thrust." The division of the collection into two homogeneous sections and a third forming a miscellaneous supplement is purely imaginary, and there is nothing to support the suggestion made that the last section was an afterthought or a later addition. Moreover, on the evidence of one manuscript, Paṇḍit Svāminātha Aiyar suggests that the Puram had three divisions—aṟam, poruḷ and iṉbam. It is, however, when we reach the next distinction drawn by Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar between the Puram and the other collections, that his misstatements attain serious proportions. He says: "Thirdly, to a large number of these Puram poems, colophons are added, noting the occasions when the poems were composed. These colophons seem to have been written by a person later than the one who made the anthology and who derived the information partly by a study of the poems and partly from tradition." To say that colophons to individual poems are a distinguishing feature of the Puram Four Hundred is not correct.